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Private property rights are a fundamental component of any successful economy. If you want a nation to prosper – property must be safe in its owners’ hands.

Intellectual Property (IP) shouldn’t be treated any differently than physical property. In fact, in most instances – in many ways – IP is far more important.

The spark of creation that is, for instance, the Microsoft Windows operations program – the Intellectual Property – is exponentially more valuable than each and every one of the millions of physical copies burned to disc for sale in stores.

But IP is bizarrely viewed by many as somehow different – less than. People who would never have stolen a compact disc from Tower Records have no compunction downloading-without-paying that same album.

And as music theft site Napster first broadly demonstrated – continuing technological advances make IP theft ever-easier. Despite what Hillary Clinton recently asserted – Secret Service agents standing guard on a server isn’t an effective way to protect its contents.

And all of this is just individuals stealing individual items. Some companies have industrialized IP theft on a global scale.

Systematic theft may be the most anti-competitive and monopolistic practice in which a company can engage. Systematic theft generates an unbeatable cost advantage by avoiding the standard cost of propertied goods for which law-abiding competitors must pay.

It creates an unfair, jump-the-gun, time-to-market advantage, by ignoring the rule of law standard of securing permission from property owners before use in the marketplace, a business practice that law-abiding competitors must respect.

It spawns and maintains a matchless online index/inventory advantage that no honest competitor could hope to assemble.

It anti-competitively undermines property-based business models which compete with Google’s free content model.

Lastly, systematic theft is the ultimate predatory practice in that it unlawfully destroys the value of any innovation or creative advantage a competitor may have….

Our government should absolutely be virulently in the property protection business. That’s certainly what our Founding Fathers had in mind. For instance – in reference to Google Theft Pattern #5 – from a little thing we call the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8):

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

So why are Republicans working with Democrats to undermine this crucial Constitutional protection? On yet another woefully misnamed DC un-“solution” – like the Affordable Care Act, Network Neutrality, the Fairness Doctrine or immigration “reform?”

She formerly served as deputy general counsel and head of patents and patent strategy at Google before taking on the job of deputy director of the USPTO on an interim basis, a position she took in December 2013. Then, in October 2014, the White House nominated Lee to be the next head of the office.

There’s a hearing today for this anti-patent bill. Ms. Lee is the lead-off, star witness.